The Road Worrier (1986)

Tagline: DON'T BE A NERD!

In this great short released by the Australian Federal Office of Road Safety, we see a group of teenagers burning their 'L' plates in an abandoned quarry while the narrator introduces the main character in a Mad Max style.

This man is Neil, who is a nervous beginning driver without many skills. He tries to rectify this by going to 'Honest Rons' garage and buying some driving skills.
The thing is that the driving skills are robots with gold painted faces and orange overalls and wacky antics.

These driving skills are meant to save Neil driving experience, but they just keep getting him into trouble and messing up his car. At one stage it ends up being covered in chicken feathers and then written off. Neil gets sick of it and confronts the mechanic, who is having his own problems. Everything ends well when a hot chick (Nell Schofeild) from the party Neil went to gives him some advice and her phone number (probably.)

This short is really great and I remember watching it in high school. It is the perfect example of how to use humour to convey a message and the bad 80's fashions are also fun to watch. I also liked all the colourful characters involved and would like to see some of the more recent work of some of these actors.

Special mention must also go to the cars they use as they exactly the sorts of cars P-platers would drive. I liked the meathead in the panel van as he was great.

The ending advice of the movie said it best:
DON'T BE A NERD!
Take your time!